If you’ve been putting off building your dream router table, Rockler’s got a deal for you. For a limited time — your guess is as good as ours what that means — Rockler is selling a JessEm Mast-R-Lift router lift and a Porter-Cable 75182 motor for $465. If you purchase the kit before July 31st, you get an extra $25 rebate from Porter-Cable which brings the grand total down to $440.
I’m not into wood turning, but I know a cool looking tool when I see one. The Gage’T may look like a deformed plastic C-clamp, but really this tool measures the wall thickness of turned bowls. Designed by Keith Tompkins, the offset design of the Gage’T allows you to measure to the center of bowls up to 18″ in diameter.
At some point, drilling shelf-pin holes became rocket science. You’d think most woodworkers would have enough skill to lay out a line of equally spaced holes, but it seems everybody has a trick or a new product to save us from our shortcomings. To give us yet another way of laying out equally spaced holes, FastCap created their layout tape.
In response to our post on using leftover candles to finish woodturnings, Toolmonger Frank Townend asked whether the candles have to be beeswax. The answer is essentially “No,” but let’s take a look at some more detail. I went looking for descriptions of the different types of wax finishes and found this on WoodTurningVideosPlus.com: “Beeswax produces a nice, subtle satin luster,” and “Carnauba produces a very high gloss.” They also mention microcrystalline wax as another option.
On multiple sites, I found people using the carnauba wax on pens and pipes that they’ve turned, but I had trouble finding good sources of carnauba wax — I’ve linked to what I found. If anyone knows of good sources for woodturning wax or other finishes, let us know in comments.
Carnauba Wax 1/2-lb for $20 [Woodcraft]
Carnauba Wax 2-oz for $8 [Cup O' Joe's]
Woodturning Waxes [Wood Turning Videos Plus]
If you’ve ever wondered why there are a bunch of 3/4″ holes in your workbench, Lee Valley sells one answer. Their patent-pending Veritas bench anchors turn those holes into a good purchase for any 1/2-13 bolt or threaded rod.
The removable and reusable all-steel bench anchors wedge into through-holes 5/8″ or thicker, or into blind holes at least 1-1/4″ deep, giving you 3/8″ of threads in your bench-dog holes to attach jigs or stops to your workbench.
How do you create a round mortise that’s larger at the bottom than at the top, and how do you fit a similarly shaped tenon in the mortise? Most importantly, why the heck would you do such an infernally confounded thing? To answer the last question, such a joint would be so strong, the wood would have to fail before the joint. To answer the how-to part of it, Rockler created the Tenon-Lok cutter. (more…)
Brooklyn-based company Scrapile makes furniture from old offcuts and scrap pieces of wood that would otherwise be discarded. They glue and press the scraps together and run ‘em through large planers, a process that inspired me to write this post. Brand Tools Online is selling the DeWalt DW734 12-1/2″ portable thickness planer for $370, down from $690, and shipping is only $7.
Powered by a 15A, 10,000 RPM motor, this bench-top planer will plane material up to 12-1/2″ wide and up to 6″ thick, with a three-knife cutting head that makes 96 cuts per inch. The plane features a four-column carriage lock, and it comes with a dust hood and one-year warranty.
My shop is cluttered with bins full of scrap wood, and the possibility of turning that scrap into furniture totally justifies the expense of this planer. If you need more justification, check out this refurbished unit at Tool King for $290.
DW734 Planer [DeWalt]
DW734 Planer [Brand Tools Online]
Refurbished DW734 [Tool King]
Via Amazon [What’s This?] [What's This?]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Depending on where you live, porch-swing weather may be upon you or closing in. If you don’t already have a porch swing, or if the old one needs to be retired, take a gander at the plans on Black & Decker’s site. Though it’s nothing fancy, it’ll satisfy the basic requirements: space for a butt or two, and something to hang the swing by.
Veritas adds versatility to your precision steel rule with their ruler stop. They designed the stop to be positioned and removed quickly and easily. Slide this little stop over your ruler and tighten its brass set screw to create a reference point for repeatable measurements.
When you’re working on a complex project with wood, you can save a lot money by efficiently laying out the pieces, especially if you work with expensive wood. CutList Plus will calculate the most efficient layout for your project, so you have fewer total board feet to purchase, less waste, more useable leftover pieces/bigger chunks, and more money in your pocket. For a Toolmonger, this could also mean more projects — if only they could do this with time!
When you’re setting posts for a deck or fence, you need either an extra set of hands or some jury-rigged bracing to keep the post plumb until the concrete sets. But with Cepco’s Post-Pod, you can set up and hold posts without the extra helpers.
This stylish new carpenter’s bracelet…um, this set of carpenter’s brass knuckles…OK, this carpenter’s circular rasp sells for $10 at Woodcraft. The rasp, originally used by staircase makers to smooth curved handrails, shapes tightly curved or concave areas where a straight rasp won’t work.
Remember that time you asked your algebra teacher when you’d ever need to solve for X in real life? There’s a good chance you still haven’t found a use for your higher math skills, but Toolmongers will likely encounter plenty of practical math issues during a project. This handy book’ll show you how to calculate roof pitch, lay out stairs, make sense of a scientific calculator, and lots of other stuff.
The nail gun revolutionized carpentry, but at the expense of tying the carpenter to a stationary compressor. Companies have devised some ingenious solutions to this problem — but battery-powered or battery-and-gas-powered nail guns can be heavy, awkward, and costly; and CO2-powered belt packs can only drive so many nails before you have to buy a new canister. Palmgren devised another solution: a portable, tank-less compressor that weighs just 6.6 lbs including the battery, so you can carry it easily over the shoulder or around the waist.
This really cool-looking edge clamp works great for repairing cracks in the tops and backs of stringed instruments, but the average woodworker might not find it very useful, unless he regularly needs to repair cracked wooden bowls, vases, or other thin curved objects. In that case, this $140 tool just might come in handy.
To drill angled holes, you can tilt your drill press table, but sometimes it’s easier and more precise to use a cradle-style angle vise instead. The head of this particular vise from Palmgren locks at preset stops every 15° from 0° to 90°, simply by inserting an alignment pin. Set any other angle by removing the alignment pin and hand-tightening the locking mechanism.
No, the WASP Sander isn’t designed for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants — it’s an innovative attachment for your drill press. This tool turns your drill press into a belt sander, a drum sander, a floppy belt sander, a flat belt sander, or a curved belt sander, depending on how you configure it.
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